The for­eign trade vol­ume of Pingx­i­ang, a city bor­der­ing Viet­nam, rose 10.6 per­cent year-on-year to 34.2 bil­lion yuan ($4.98 bil­lion) in the first half of 2018 thanks to its ad­van­ta­geous lo­ca­tion and a se­ries of fa­vor­able poli­cies.

Sit­u­ated in South China’s Guangxi Zhuang au­tonomous re­gion, Pingx­i­ang shares a land bor­der with Viet­nam, called the Friend­ship Pass.

Wang Fanghong, Party sec­re­tary of Pingx­i­ang, said: “We are ac­cel­er­at­ing in­fras­truc­ture con­struc­tion to fur­ther con­nect the land bor­der be­tween Pingx­i­ang and Viet­nam. Since the Friend­ship Pass bor­der port — one of our three ded­i­cated freight cor­ri­dors — was com­pleted in 2017, the num­ber of ve­hi­cles pass­ing through the fron­tier in­creased from 800 to 1,200 per day.”

He added that cus­toms pro­ce­dures now only take around two min­utes, com­pared to 20 min­utes in the past, while pa­per­less cus­toms dec­la­ra­tions can be com­pleted within 20 sec­onds.

Bor­der trade in Pingx­i­ang to­taled 21.2 bil­lion yuan in the first half of 2018, ac­count­ing for 20.23 per­cent of that of the na­tion’s to­tal.

Hoang Thi Shi, whose home in Viet­nam is 40 kilo­me­ters from the Friend­ship Pass bor­der port, now works for a Chi­nese com­pany based in Pingx­i­ang.

She pointed out that while she could only earn around 1,000 yuan per month in Viet­nam for work­ing more than 12 hours per day, she now re­ceives 3,000 yuan monthly, plus board­ing and lodg­ing, for an eighthour day.

The 26-year-old can re­new her visa ev­ery month at the Pingx­i­ang cross-bor­der la­bor ser­vice cen­ter, which was set up to fa­cil­i­tate la­bor co­op­er­a­tion in 2017.

Ac­cord­ing to the ser­vice cen­ter, 121,000 Viet­namese had been reg­is­tered and got per­mis­sion to work in Pingx­i­ang by the end of Oc­to­ber.

“There are 120 Viet­namese work­ers like Hoang Thi Shi in my com­pany. I am glad to save la­bor costs and they are ea­ger to work here,” said He Jiang­tao, gen­eral man­ager of a Chi­nese panel com­pany.

Ac­cord­ing to Wang Fanghong, the lo­cal au­thor­i­ties are seek­ing to ex­tend the en­try visa for Viet­namese work­ers to six months in or­der to at­tract more busi­nesses to the city.